FOOD MAKERS, facing growing pressure from legislators and child-advocacy groups over their role in childhood obesity, are planning to propose tighter voluntary restrictions on ads aimed at children.
The Grocery Manufacturers Association, the food industry's main lobby, is expected to unveil its proposals Friday, marking the industry's latest effort to stave off legislation and government regulation of advertising aimed at young consumers.
Among the proposals are ways to crack down on product placement in TV shows, the use of licensed characters in ads and food-packaging, and "advergaming," the practice of larding online games with brands of candy, soft drinks and cereal. Some $12 billion each year is spent on advertising products to children.
But the GMA is stopping short of proposing nutritional standards for kid-targeted foods in advertising. Some companies, including Kraft Foods Inc. and PepsiCo Inc., have established such nutritional guidelines for themselves. Many nutritionists, legislators and public-health advocates have called for such requirements industrywide and questioned whether food makers can effectively police themselves. The industry currently regulates advertising to children through the Children's Advertising Review Unit, or CARU, an industry-funded body.
Iowa Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin, who has introduced legislation that would give the government more regulatory power over food ads for kids, said he is eager to read the proposal and wants to establish a dialogue with the food industry. However, he added, "the problem with CARU is that they have no teeth, no real enforcement mechanisms. If CARU is now going to be `regulating' advergaming as well as they have been regulating TV ads, then we aren't getting very far.
"A handful of people are tasked to provide oversight to a multibillion-dollar industry," Sen. Harkin added. "The deck seems a bit stacked to me."
Several big advertisers of kids' foods expressed support of CARU and the GMA's proposals. "We are a strong believer and supporter of self-regulation and the current industry proposals to strengthen it," said Alan Harris, chief marketing officer of Kellogg Co. A spokeswoman for General Mills Inc. echoed the statement. Mark Berlind, a Kraft spokesman, said, "The industry proposals offer a constructive path forward towards addressing consumers' concerns over how food and beverage products are marketed to younger children."
Tactics such as as online gaming and product placement have gone largely unnoticed by CARU. Founded in 1974 and funded directly by the companies it regulates, CARU at first focused on monitoring TV commercials during the after-school time slot and on Saturday morning cartoons. The GMA's proposals aim to update CARU's guidelines, many of which were created with toy safety, not childhood obesity, in mind.
The GMA is suggesting that food companies boost CARU's resources and that CARU beef up its staffing, according to people briefed on the proposals. The GMA also wants to make CARU's monitoring process more transparent. The current system is confidential: The public learns of an offending ad only after the advertiser agrees to fix it. The process encourages companies to participate, says Elizabeth Lascoutx, CARU's director.
The GMA is suggesting that the process be public as soon as CARU discovers an ad that violates its guidelines. The GMA is also proposing a voluntary process under which CARU would prescreen companies ads to ensure they comply.
The proposals come just as food makers are set to gather in Washington later this week to make their case for self-policing to the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Health and Human Services. The GMA, whose members ring up more than $680 billion in grocery sales a year, opposes government regulation of the ads and supports a system in which food companies set and enforce their own rules.
Based on the 13th floor of an old children's pajama factory, CARU has been an easy target for child-health advocates: The unit's five staff members (six including an intern) watch hours of television looking for ads that might be inappropriate for children. Critics argue that CARU, with an annual budget of $650,000, lacks the firepower to go up against the hundreds of ads the food industry produces each year.
CARU, part of the Council of Better Business Bureaus and founded jointly by the council and the advertising industry, receives 90% of its funding directly from children's advertisers. The more a company advertises to kids, the more it pays to CARU. Membership fees range from $3,500 for a company whose children's ad spending is less than $1 million a year, up to $75,000 for a company with such ad spending of more than $50 million.
The proposals, which are still being ironed out, are expected to be presented as "suggestions" to CARU from the GMA. One of the loudest criticisms of CARU's current guidelines is that they are too amorphous and leave large loopholes for companies to walk through. "So far, self-regulation from the food industry has been laughable," said Marion Nestle, a New York University professor of nutrition who frequently is critical of the industry. She added, "The industry sees even the strongest self-regulation as better for them than any kind of government intervention."